By now, it’s quite clear some parts of Melanie Trump’s Republican National Convention speech were lifted from First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. Turnitin.com, the website used by students and teachers for term paper plagiarism checks cites examples of both “clone” plagiarism (where it is copied word for word) and “find and replace” plagiarism (where the original meaning is retained with a word or phrase changed here and there). Read Turnitin’s comments on the subject here.
In addition, it’s hard to look at videos like the one above with side-by-side comparisons and come to any other conclusion except that someone didn’t do their job. The speechwriters and staffers were either lazy or incompetent. Inexcusable.
BUT, these things happen and when they do, there’s an honorable way out of the mess: fess up. Admit it, apologize and say it won’t happen again. And don’t let it happen again. Behind the scenes, do an internal review and determine if someone needs to get fired, disciplined, demoted or trained. Then move on.
In this particular instance, the Trump campaign spent valuable airtime sending its advisors to deny, defend and deflect. This didn’t work and the whole mess became a complete distraction. It was supposed to be a time of unity, excitement and high-fives and instead turned into a time of finger-pointing, conflicting stories and speculation. The more denials, the more distractions. The news media and social media went wild. Late-night hosts had their best night since Sarah Palin came to town. Commentators questioned if the campaign was ready for the big leagues or the bush league. Mrs. Trump said she wrote most of the speech herself, then it was a team of speechwriters, then a staffer took blame for the chaos. Concurrently, the campaign manager insisted it was simply Mrs. Trump using common words not cribbing, another spinner saying it was Hillary Clinton’s fault, while Donald Trump, Jr. blamed the speechwriters and said they should have been more careful. With this type of dysfunction, it’s impossible to move on and get the focus on anything else.
I imagine there’s people who shouldn’t have done that or who should have cleaned it up better.
Donald Trump, Jr., CBS News
Is all press good press, as Donald J. Trump tweeted to his followers about all this wonderful publicity? (Read more in our recent blog, Publicity: Is It All Good.)
Sigh.
Just think of how different the story would have been if the campaign had acknowledged their gaffe and apologized. Voila – no more story. Facebook, reporters and late-night comics would have no choice but to move on along with the campaign.
John Undeland, President of Undeland Associates and a guest on The Marketing Mojo Show agrees and here’s what he had to say about another crisis management situation.
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